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Obama sending envoys to Mideast

The Palestinian government plans to ask the Security Council for a vote on statehood status. |
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“Frankly, I would like see the U.S. abstain or not veto our effort [at the Security Council] or our request to join the United Nations. I don’t think this is the natural role for the United States,” Areikat said during the breakfast session organized by the Christian Science Monitor. “I don’t think this runs compatible with U.S. principles.”

Areikat thanked the Obama administration for criticizing proposals in the U.S. Congress to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if the move for statehood goes forward. He also said it would not prompt Palestinian leaders to back off.

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“We are not going to allow financial aid to be a sword over our necks to try to coerce us into making political positions that not in the interests of our people,” the PLO envoy said. “This is an issue of national pride here we are talking about. … We have lived before under much more difficult conditions.”

Areikat also insisted Palestinian leaders are not eager for a showdown with the U.S.

“We have made it clear repeatedly that we don’t seek a confrontation with the United States,” Areikat said. “We don’t believe this should have been a Palestinian-American issue. … We don’t want to have relations deteriorate with the U.S.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also weighed in on the issue of Palestinian statehood in an interview with The Washington Post Tuesday. “I hope that [statehood recognition] will happen very soon and that can be the beginning point. That should be the beginning of the liberation of the entire Palestinian land. The Palestinian nation existed before the Palestinian had unwanted guests pour into Palestine with guns,” Ahmadinejad said.

On Monday, Obama called the Palestinian bid for statehood a “distraction” and said it would not lead to a viable state.

In a roundtable with Hispanic journalists, Obama said, “This issue is only going to be resolved by Israelis and Palestinians agreeing on something.”

“What happens in New York City can occupy a lot of press attention but is not going to change actually what is happening on the ground until the Israelis and Palestinians sit down,” Obama said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Obama said he believed the most likely scenario was for the Palestinians to seek to upgrade their representation from current observer status to nonmember state in the General Assembly.

Readers' Comments (13)

Obama and the Democrats hate of Jews is going to come back and bite them big time! "At least one Afghan police officer and a civilian were killed on Tuesday in an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Taliban insurgents launched the assault, firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades into the embassy as well as into NATO headquarters." When Turkey's warships try coming in the bombs will start flying and the middle east war will begin. The Arab Spring has been as good for America as Obama's summer of recovery! Lets all be thankful that Obama is one and done. The world is far to dangerous a place to have an idiot like Obama being America's commander in chief! As always you can contact me at work http://www.bestmichiganbusines... and yes keep those jokes coming. Jimmy Hoffa. Barack Obama, George Soros,Paul Krugman and Micheal Moore the ugly face of the Flee Bagger Party of Evil/Organized Crime Union formerly known as the Democratic party.

There is something that Dems do not understand so I will try to explain it to them. Real men judge other men by finding out if they keep their word. It has to do with this thing called "honor". So if a man is as the old saying goes "only as good as his word" then why would any real man consider Obama to be a man? You see I am a real man. Obama is something much less than I am. When the Flee Bagger Party of evil demonstrated in Madison WI they carried hundreds of signs calling for the murder of Gov. Walker. Obama was happy about this and said so. I thought Obama was against hate speech? I now know he meant only by Republicans. Obama is not Americas president he is not mine.

Didn't America just veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel's settlement expansion, the same settlement expansions that Obama himself said he would not accept the legitimacy of? What a joke this country has become.

Why is the question of a Palestinian state such an issue? East Germany was a state under practical Soviet control but we recognized it and had an embassy there. We acknowledge that Cuba is a state. Burma has been run by a military dictatorship since the 1960s but we recognize it as a state. We recognize any number of states/governments with which we have policy disagreements or outright hostility. Hell, our interests in Iran are represented by the Swiss because we understand that Iran is a state. So am a bit perplexed that if we can accomodate places like Cuba, China, Sudan, etc. and countries run by the likes of Chavez, why the hyper negativity about the Palestinians. We recognized Libya/Kaddafi and Abbas is no Kaddafi.

Why not accord the Palestinians the same level of recognition as others? Nothing will change on the ground other than they will be treated like others. We can still judge the Palestinians based on their behavior and guage our actions accordingly.

The lack of Middle East peace is due to our long-standing biased policy favoring Israel (which in fact is the reason we were attacked on 9/11). Dennis Ross, lead negotiator at the 2000 Camp David talks, is a major culprit. As pointed out in The New York Times 5/21/11, renowned peacemaker George Mitchell was at odds with Ross and resigned this year. As documented in Clayton Swisher’s book The Truth About Camp David, Palestinian negotiators, such as Nabil Shaath, at Clinton’s July 2000 Camp David peace talks, said Ross is “more Israeli than the Israelis.”all

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11 it might behoove us to consider why we were attacked to begin with. Most Americans are clueless. A small hint was provided in The 9/11 Commission Report, (page 147), which describes the motivation of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” (The Israel Lobby did not want that sentence in the report.) Indeed, KSM has said that the purpose of the 9/11 attacks was to "wake the American people up." As part of his original 9/11 plan, KSM was going to land one of the planes here and then "deliver a speech condemning American policy on Israel." (The New York Times 9/15/09) all

Arabs around the world are demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Arabs most in need are the persecuted Palestinians some of whom are incarcerated in the Gaza prison with others subjected to repressive apartheid conditions in the West Bank. The sadistic Zionist land-thieves do their utmost to deprive the Palestinians of that which is most important: their dignity. A longstanding al Qaeda complaint against the US has been our support of corrupt Arab dictatorships. We have supported dictators like Egypt’s Mubarak who helped Israel incarcerate 1.5 million Palestinians in the concentration camp called Gaza and was thus rightfully hated by his people. The Palestinians deserve an Arab Spring too. Peace talks would have taken place if not for Israel’s greed in expanding illegal Jewish settlements on stolen Arab land. Although we may have corrupted various Arab dictators to accept this status quo, their people do not. As these leaders are overthrown, the people are insisting on Palestinian rights since this is the issue of core importance throughout the Arab/Muslim world. We have seen this already in Egypt in the storming of the Israeli Embassy. all

In a New York Times op-ed 9/12/11 entitled "Veto a State, Lose an Ally", Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal states that the US should support Palestine statehood at the UN or "risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world." UN recognition would provide a chance to return to peace negotiations. He notes that the 2002 Arab Peace Plan should be the starting point for such negotiations since the Oslo process has proved fruitless. He points out that a US veto would have profound negative consequences, damaging American-Saudi relations and further undermining our relations with the Muslim world.

Ron Paul pointed out at the debate last night that we are under attack out of revenge for our foreign policy. “We are there occupying their land. What would we do if China did to us what we do to those countries over there?” “The idea that the whole Muslim world is attacking us because we are free and prosperous is not true.” “They [al Qaeda] have more attacks against us and the American interests per month than occurred in all the years before 9/11.” Al Qaeda’s original complaints against us were due to 1. Our bases in their holy lands in Saudi Arabia; 2. Lack of fairness to the Palestinians; 3. “We had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not, then there’s some problem.”